Spie Press Book

Photon Transfer is designed for a wide audience--from the novice to the advanced user already familiar with the method. For first-time users, the book's primary purpose is to give sufficient guidelines to accurately generate, calibrate, and understand imaging data products through the photon transfer method.

The book contains more than 230 figures that present experimental CCD and CMOS data products and modeling simulations connected to photon transfer. Contents also provide hundreds of relations that support photon transfer theory, simulations, and data.

Preface

This book was prompted by engineers, scientists, and hardware managers who attended short courses held on CCD and CMOS imagers at UCLA Extension, SPIE conferences, and various seminars. Roughly 15% of course material presented is typically allocated to the photon transfer characterization technique necessary to set the stage for other sessions that require its application. Course evaluation forms generated by students requested more in-depth discussions about the measurement standard, and suggested that a book on photon transfer would also be welcomed. Encouraged by these recommendations, after 25 years of teaching these courses, this short reference book finally materialized.

Photon Transfer is designed for a wide audiencefrom the novice to the advanced user already familiar with the method. For first-time users, the book's primary purpose is to give sufficient guidelines to accurately generate, calibrate, and understand imaging data products through the photon transfer method. With this purpose in mind, Chapters 2-4 represent background and theoretical material necessary to fundamentally show how the technique works. Chapter 5 then takes the reader into the process of actually generating photon transfer curves, the first objective accomplished by learners before proceeding into more complex photon transfer products.

Experienced users may find the material presented in Chapters 6-12 to be new territory. As this book was written, the author had numerous new insights into photon transfer even after more than 30 years of previous study and use (e.g., Chapter 7 on the subject of V/e- nonlinearity, Chapter 8 on flat fielding, and Chapter 9 on the modulation photon transfer curve). It is very likely that readers of this book will also make new discoveries and find different ways to apply photon transfer on future imaging technologies and applications.

The book contains more than 230 figures that present experimental CCD and CMOS data products and modeling simulations connected to photon transfer. Contents also provide hundreds of relations that support photon transfer theory, simulations, and data presented. For the more important equations, 57 example problems are presented to demonstrate how the relations are used. Appendix A presents a spreadsheet of experimental CMOS data used to exercise the photon transfer method and produce numerous products. Appendices B-D present example computer photon transfer simulation programs utilized throughout the book.

The author would like to acknowledge Margaret Thayer and Timothy Lamkins of SPIE for giving life to my English. Thanks goes to Joseph Altebrando and Rich Lobdill for first seeing and reacting with welcomed criticisms to the manuscript. I wish to express my thanks to Tom Elliott for helping me pioneer the photon transfer technique over the many years we have worked together, and I especially want to thank my wife Linda and daughter Amanda, my sister Barb, and Mom and Dad for their timely support in many ways.